


Counterbalancing the Abacus

by AndreaLyn



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:34:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He drowns in order to draw in air. He bleeds out so that he can open his eyes to a brand new world after every dream.</i>
</p>
<p>In which Eames abandons his team and Arthur visits to discover why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterbalancing the Abacus

Arthur hears a rumour through the thieving community that Eames has abandoned the extraction team he’s currently working with. There’s no surprise inherent in the news because with Eames, there’d always been that lingering worry that one day self-preservation was going to kick in and then he’d simply start looking out for his own number one.   
  
He doesn’t pay much mind to those first idling gossips.   
  
When Yusuf calls him, rife with worry, and says that Eames failed to arrive for an appointment in Mombasa, Arthur doesn’t think much of that, either. “I’m sure he’s just lying low somewhere,” he insists, good old reliable Arthur with all the facts. “I’ll make a few calls and see what I can find.”  
  
He calls Paris and finds that Eames isn’t at his place there.  
  
He calls Los Angeles and neither Eames’ landlord nor Cobb has seen him around.   
  
He’s not in Moscow, not in Mombasa, and not in Morocco. He hasn’t been to Sydney since he pulled a con that’s still got the government furious with him – but then, Eames did try to sell them the Opera House (and successfully). His last call is London and the bookies that Arthur keeps in tabs with are hesitant to give answers.  
  
“So, he’s there?”  
  
“He is and he isn’t,” they all reply. “Thing is, well.”  
  
“Well?” Arthur coaxes.  
  
“London Times. Page A16,” is all he’s told. “September 22nd.” Two days past and old news, at best.   
  
It takes some tracking down, but with technology, a matter that might have taken hours in a time barely in the blink of an eye ago is easy to finish in minutes. He finds the London Times and then tracks down page A16. It takes him only a few minutes to read the breaking story before he switches tabs in his browser and books a ticket to London.  
  
*  
  
When Arthur was only seven, he lost his father. He didn’t die, he just left, and Arthur didn’t know at that age that sometimes, people just don’t come back to you. He remembers the way his father tipped his cap to him and pressed a kiss to his mother’s cheek before leaving through the front door.  
  
It’s been twenty seven years since that moment and Arthur hasn’t lost the sense of grief or the hope that one day he’ll walk back in through a front door that even Arthur hasn’t seen in decades. It’s the sense of grief he attaches to now as he roams through the gravestones and wonders if his father is still even alive.  
  
The stone relics here are crumbling and the sky above rumbles as if to take responsibility for the decay and the destruction when in truth, this graveyard is hundreds of years old and all time has done is soldiered on while people lived and died.   
  
He winds his way and watches his step over mossy stones and pays respect to the bones beneath him by trying to avoid stepping directly on a grave. He misses the graveyards in Paris with their dignified cobblestones and arboreal majesty.  
  
Arthur thinks he just misses any place that isn’t right here.  
  
The sky rumbles above him once more and though he chances a look up, it doesn’t immediately begin pouring on him – a good sign.   
  
He presses a reverent hand to a tombstone to help him along and stops twenty feet away from the dwindling crowd. There are only six of them now in the distance and he bows his head and folds his hands before him as he approaches, aware that he has little cause to be here as far as these people are concerned.  
  
He murmurs quiet condolences as he tugs on the starched neck of his shirt – oppressively tight and making Arthur wish for something looser and more casual.  
  
He waits.   
  
He waits and thinks of his father and he waits and wonders if death has come to claim him. Arthur thinks of all the times that he’s embraced death in order to surface back to the real world. He drowns in order to draw in air. He bleeds out so that he can open his eyes to a brand new world after every dream.  
  
And here he is in a graveyard for the first time since Mal died and all he can think about is whether or not death is keeping tabs on Arthur and his kind – dreamsharers, who taunt and tempt death with every dream and nightmare.   
  
He can almost imagine an abacus in his mind’s eye, tallying up the score.   
  
He smiles – subdued, of course – at the knowledge that currently, he’s winning.  
  
The crowd thins out some more and Arthur takes this as his opportunity to push on forward. He clears his throat politely and adjusts his hands until he can slide them over his thighs. When that feels uncomfortable, yet, he shifts into an easy stance that would look at home on any military base – arms folded behind his back, posture perfect.  
  
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says by rote.  
  
Eames turns from where he’s regarding the polished headstone – carved with care and brand new. He’s clad in a charcoal grey suit and his tie is black as the darkest night and he looks more wrecked than Arthur has ever seen him – in any forge. There’s calmness to his destruction and he presses his lips together tightly as if impressed that Arthur has come. “Yes,” Eames remarks, his voice clipped, “I have heard that a hundred times today. Thank you for adding to the pile.”  
  
Arthur’s lip curls up as he refrains from letting loose a snide comment in turn. Their usual dynamic needs to be holstered for the day. Eames isn’t offering biting barbs in order to go along with their usual give-and-take. This stems from grief and pain and anything said is likely only half-meant.   
  
At least, on this day.   
  
“I didn’t know that you and your mother were close,” Arthur speaks in a hush, the wind nearly drowning out his words.  
  
“The funny thing is, we really weren’t. I thought we had a good relationship,” Eames murmurs, sounding like he’s speaking only to himself. “I’d call and visit, but she didn’t know what I did. She didn’t know what I am, not really. Do you think....”  
  
Arthur waits, but Eames never finishes his question and Arthur knows better than to pry.   
  
When Mal died --  _when she killed herself_ , says the malicious voice in her head – Arthur had followed Cobb anywhere he had wanted to go. Arthur is almost surprised in how fearful he is at Eames’ unpredictability. For all of Arthur’s facts, figures, and reasoning, he has absolutely no idea what Eames is going to do next.   
  
He should  _know_ , but he doesn’t.   
  
“Eames, do you want a ride home?”  
  
“No, the family is waiting in the limo,” he murmurs. He’s yet to take his eyes off of the freshly-dug grave and Arthur wonders at what comes next. “Arthur, why did you come?”  
  
“Yusuf called. Thought I had a line on where you were, but I didn’t,” Arthur replies, casting his gaze to the side to avoid eye contact – as if Eames would look up from his mother’s name etched in the marble of a cold slab. “I didn’t until I called locals who knew that she had passed. What...what was it?”  
  
That gets a chuckle out of Eames, a strangled thing, and it’s apparently enough to draw his gaze up to meet Arthur’s.  
  
“She died in her sleep,” he says, his eyes red – but dry. “She bloody well  _died_  in her  _sleep_ , Arthur, can you fucking believe that?” His laughter is harsh and accusatory as he shakes his head, digging through his pockets with trembling hands in search of something. “I can’t,” he mutters, finding a cigarette and cupping his palms to hide from the wind as he lights up. “It’s like all this time, I’ve been tempting fate and she pays the price.”  
  
“Eames,” Arthur replies patiently – and almost condescendingly. “You know that’s not how things happen.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Eames admits in a quiet rush of an exhalation. “Right now, Arthur, I don’t know.”   
  
There’s a shout in the distance summoning Eames to join the rest of the family in the limo. Arthur pries his gaze away from Eames in this wrecked state and stares at the sky, searching for strikes of lightning and the warning that it’s going to pour.  
  
“Looks like rain,” he says, basking in the solace of small talk.  
  
“Right,” replies Eames as he takes three long drags of his cigarette, burning through the filter as quickly as he can before licking thumb and index finger and putting out the light rather than stubbing it underneath his shined shoe. “When in doubt, turn to banalities?”  
  
Arthur doesn’t respond. He and Eames have never discussed anything more serious than the latest model of gun in the Army, extraction plans, and the weather.   
  
“Well, I should be off,” Eames murmurs. “You’re invited to the wake, if you’ve nothing better to do.”  
  
Arthur summons up the thought of the Eames family in their grieving moments and knows that he won’t be there. Eames brushes past him in a grief-struck lethargy, their shoulders barely touching, and then he’s gone in the distance.  
  
Arthur has been left alone at the grave of Celia Eames, to tend to the dead without a single memory.  
  
When the rain begins to fall, Arthur wonders again about his father.  
  
He wonders, thinks, prays that his battles of facing death in the eye haven’t taken a man already lost to him. He chides himself for being silly when he begins to actually take Eames’ ridiculous notion seriously and leaves the graveyard and all the ghosts behind.


End file.
